In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “There’s no reason for you to be walking around with a mask.” But the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) soon changed his stance. Although not 100 percent effective, Fauci said, wearing masks is “a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified during a recent House committee hearing that, despite the recent release of an international research review that found masks are ineffective against COVID-19 and the flu, her agency’s masking guidance “doesn’t really change with time.”
During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) asked Walensky to explain how the CDC uses evidence to update or change its guidance.
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President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) continued its fight to implement a nationwide mask mandate on airplanes and other forms of transportation in federal court Tuesday, according to Reuters. The DOJ asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge’s April 2021 decision striking down the mask mandate, according to Reuters. Biden declared that “the pandemic is over” Sept. 18, 2021, and all 50 states and most localities had dropped their own mask mandates by early 2022.
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Boston Public Schools is considering reinstating a mask mandate after the holiday break to minimize absenteeism from COVID-19, the mayor stated in a Wednesday announcement.
The decision is currently under consideration by city officials who fear a rise in COVID-19 cases once students return to the classroom in the new year, NBC Boston reported. Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu stated that a decision would be finalized by the end of the week.
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White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha acknowledged last week what many doctors and scientists have been saying since the start of the COVID pandemic: that “no study … shows that masks work that well” to stop the spread of virus infection.
Jha appeared last week, along with Philadelphia Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole on “The Future of COVID and Public Health,” sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Ahead of the holiday break, several schools in blue states are implementing mask mandates in light of the “tripledemic.”
Schools in states such as Pennsylvania, Washington and New Jersey are fearing a “tripledemic” of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza (flu) and coronavirus. To combat the “tripledemic” some schools are considering mask mandates while other states have already asked their students to mask up.
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Two school boards with conservative majorities parted ways with their schools’ superintendents in November, both of whom oversaw the implementation of mask mandates into the fall of 2021.
On Nov. 29, Sarasota County Schools Superintendent Brennan Asplen agreed to step down after the school board criticized mask mandates which Asplen backed, while on Nov. 22 Brevard County Superintendent Mark Mullins, who faced backlash for supporting an extended mask mandate, agreed with the school board to enter into separation negotiations. Both school districts extended their mask mandates into the fall of the 2021-2022 school year.
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The New York City Department of Education has fired another 850 teachers and aides for refusing to comply with its COVID vaccine mandate, bringing the total number of school staff terminated over the mRNA shots that have not prevented the spread of infection to 2,000.
Some 1,300 department employees agreed to comply with the vaccine mandate by September 5 after taking a year of unpaid leave with benefits, the New York Post reported. The department informed personnel they would have to be vaccinated by that date or be “deemed to have voluntarily resigned.”
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The Chief Medical Advisor for President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID) who was also the face of the America’s COVID-19 response has announced that he will resign from those positions effective in December.
“It has been the honor of a lifetime to have led the NIAID, an extraordinary institution, for so many years and through so many scientific and public health challenges. I am very proud of our many accomplishments,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said in his resignation announcement. “I have worked with – and learned from – countless talented and dedicated people in my own laboratory, at NIAID, at NIH and beyond. To them I express my abiding respect and gratitude.”
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The current unpopularity of mask mandates in American school districts has not stopped mask advocates from promoting their return as a COVID-19 mitigation measure, but the research used to justify mandates is facing expanded scrutiny.
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After nearly two years of unprecedented lockdowns, mandates, and other restrictions on daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of graduating high school students are preparing to head off to college without having learned nearly as much as they should have.
The Associated Press reports that such students are about to enter college significantly farther behind the academic standards of previous years, almost entirely due to the pandemic’s forced transition to “online learning,” a shortage of teachers, and mask and vaccine mandates that disrupted school life for millions of students across the country. Such students risk the possibility of being grossly underprepared for the level of work required by college, and could result in a massive spike in college dropouts in the coming years.
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As the school year draws to an end, American universities around the country are reinstating mask mandates.
The University of California Los Angeles sent out an email to its students on May 26, stating that its mask mandate “will go back into effect beginning Friday, May 27 and remain in place through Wednesday, June 15.”
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Voters appear poised to clobber the party that brought us COVID lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and inflation. Indeed, rising inflation has largely resulted from COVID-related disincentives to work, disrupted supply chains, and blowout spending, along with federal restrictions on oil and gas production. It’s perhaps surprising, therefore, that the Cook Political Report foresees Republican gains in the House of Representatives as being only “in the 15-25 seat range,” while its projections suggest that Democrats have at least a coin flip’s chance of holding the Senate.
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The Biden administration announced Monday it will no longer enforce a federal mask mandate on public transportation, including airplanes. The decision was announced after Federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the directive was unlawful, noting that the CDC had not sought public comment prior to its order—issued 14 months ago—and did not adequately explain its reasoning.
Following the court’s decision, four major airlines immediately announced they would drop mask requirements on all domestic flights.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.
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Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Pennsylvania US Senator and candidate for governor, Dough Mastriano to talk about why he’s running and his stance on election integrity.
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On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is allegedly set to announce an easing of mask restrictions on the national level.
Fox News reports that the updated guidelines will focus less on the overall number of cases, and will instead emphasize a community’s general risk of spreading the coronavirus. As such, current guidelines apply to individuals who live in communities with allegedly “substantial or high transmission.” The CDC claims, without evidence, that 95 percent of all counties in the United States qualify as “high transmission.”
The new guidelines will apparently not apply to most Americans, as the new criteria will factor in hospitalizations with the overall capacity of local medical facilities. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said that the new guidelines will focus more on “enhanced prevention efforts.”
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As school districts start dropping the mask mandates, removing pornographic books from their libraries, and explicitly prohibiting critical race theory, it’s clear that the parent protests are working. School boards, even in progressive bastions like San Francisco, are currently being cleaned out and replaced by more pro-parent members. Moreover, politicians like the governor of Oklahoma are openly instituting a school choice model that would allow for different schooling models and have education dollars follow the student, not automatically go to the school.
Naturally, these developments invite more pushback (sometimes literally so) from those who believe they’re supporting public education. It was fine in the past to let various kooky parents carry on about the evils of teaching Harry Potter or sex ed; school boards and district leaders could simply yawn and carry on as before. However, now that it actually threatens their authority and influence, they can no longer ignore parents’ concerns..
In general, opponents of protesting parents make the same points over and over. They deny that public schools have problems, play semantic games with critical race theory (“it’s just an abstract legal theory taught in law school,” etc.), and accuse angry parents of being misguided racists. In their view, parents who demand a more wholesome and academic experience for their children are actually demanding an exclusively white and privileged experience. And for good measure, they will add an anecdote about a heroic public school teacher changing lives, proving beyond any doubt that public schools are still doing noble work and are essential for a healthy, diverse society.
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In a letter to the House Speaker and Senate President Friday, President Joe Biden extended the national COVID-19 emergency pandemic indefinitely.
“There remains a need to continue this national emergency,” Biden wrote.
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No, this is not another Qanon or Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It’s a sober recitation of the facts and incidents that can support no other conclusion.
Let’s start with one important stage-setting fact: According to OpenSecrets.org two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups. From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high.
Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where the Open Secrets’ data begins. Go here for a detailed breakdown of teachers union political giving.
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It is hard to know which is more frightening: the Australian radicalism about COVID-19, the Austrian effort to coerce its citizens, or the attitudes of American Democrats who regard extreme sanctions as reasonable behavior toward the supposedly bad people who don’t get vaccinated or wear masks.
Let’s consider each one.
In Australia, the government felt so threatened by the best tennis player in the world that it intervened decisively to block him from entering the country and competing in the Australian Open.
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A former Planned Parenthood president and public health professional argued in a Thursday op-ed for The Washington Post that the rise in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant is not a reason to keep schools closed.
Dr. Leana Wen argued “both sides [of the school reopening debate] are wrong,” in her op-ed. “let’s agree that schools are essential and then work to reduce risk to get students back to in-person learning,” Wen wrote.
Wen called it “astounding” that governors in states like Texas, Georgia and Iowa are fighting against school mask mandates and that Florida’s surgeon general is discouraging testing in schools, attributing ” “low vaccine uptake among children” to “rampant right-wing disinformation.”
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Mask mandates do little, if anything, to make the air safer inside airplanes, two major airline CEOs argued before Congress Wednesday.
“I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment,” Gary Kelly, chief executive of Southwest Airlines, told lawmakers. Being inside a plane “is very safe and very high quality compared to any other indoor setting,” Kelly said. The air filters on planes turn over clean air every three minutes, eliminating nearly all airborne pathogens, he explained.
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While children in Pennsylvania will soon be allowed to return to school without masks, children in Tennessee will not.
Over a 24-hour period, Pennsylvania’s highest court and a federal judge in Tennessee came to opposite conclusions about whether mask mandates should be legal.
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A Missouri newspaper is standing by its recent reporting on COVID-19 mask mandates after it drew criticism from Gov. Mike Parson (R).
“Our story — which included all documents and data supporting it — speaks for itself. We stand behind our reporting,” Editor-in-Chief of The Missouri Independent Jason Hancock told The Star News Network.
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A California congressman is facing backlash for a series of tweets slamming unvaccinated Americans and parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.
“I’m losing my Covid patience [thread]. I’ve tried to reason with the unvaxxed. I’ve directed some to medical pros. I don’t judge but hear them out and steer them to facts. The unvaxxed love to say it’s about choice. But you know who doesn’t have a choice? My 3 kids under 5,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA-15) said on Twitter.
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